Pages

Monday, September 13, 2010

Photographing Kids

It was a gorgeous spring day, we dressed our children, then ages 3 years old and 7 months old, and headed to some beautiful gardens to take some pictures of the kids in the flowers.

Idyllic, right?

The reality:

My son was sprinkling dirt on his baby sister's head while she lunged and reached with all her might for handfuls of gravel to put in her mouth!

So, now and every year for the past 3 years (since we added a 3rd child to the picture-taking chaos), I've treated myself to a family session with a photographer. She has young kids of her own so she understands, and no matter how uncooperative my 3 kids are she always seems to get some great shots of them at least looking like smiling angels! And she gives us the digital images so I can print pictures even years later!

Money well spent, my friends, money well spent!

And now it's time for me to go email her about our appointment for this year before she's booked through Christmas!

We have had good and not so good experiences with pros. Generally the ones that you can hire privately to meet you in a setting of your choice seem to be the best. We've done some in store studios and they were OK, but less than ideal. One of them thought that giving my kid a toy and then grabbing it away from her was a good way to get her to smile. NOT! We have one priceless photo of my three kids in a row: one is picking her nose, the middle kid is staring at the camera like "what's this about" and the third is bawling and about to leave the scene because she was having separation anxiety. It's so bad it's cute! Saving it for wedding slideshows. I agree though - you're more likely to get a good shot when someone else is trying to get it.